AN ADDRKSS 



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CHIHF-JIISTICH SAMliHI. SliWALL, 



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OIJ) SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON, 



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ON THE OCCASION' OK THE ERKCTION OF TABLETS IN THE 

CIU'HCH, COMMlCMOIlATn'E OK IIS LINK OF MINISTERS. 

AND OF SAMin;i, SKWAI.I. AMI SAMCKI. AOA.MS. 



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25773 



"STATELY AND SLOW. WITH THOUGHTFUL \IK, 
HIS BLACK CAP HIDING HIS WHITENED HAIK, 
WALKS THE JUDGE OF THE GREAT ASSIZE, 
SAMUEL SEWALL, THE GOOD AND WISE. 
HIS FACE WITH LINES OF FIRMNESS WROUGHT, 
HE WEARS THE LOOK OF A MAN UNBOUGHT. 
WHO SWEARS TO HIS HURT AND CHANGES NOT; 
YET, TOUCHED AND SOFTENED NEVERTHELESS 
WITH THE GRACE OF A CHRISTIAN GENTLENESS. 
THE FACE THAT A CHILD WOl'LD CLIMB TO KISS ! 
TRUE AND TENDER AND BRAVE AND JUST, 
THAT MAN MIGHT HONOR AND WOMAN TRUST." 

1 1 In I Her. 



1! 



Press of David Ci.app & Son. 




SAMUEL SEWALL. 



It would not have been at all a matter out of course or 
reason, if the name of Samuel Sevvall, instead of finding a 
separate place of honor on a commemorative tablet in this 
Church, had appeared on the roll of its ministers, preceding 
that of his son and some others. In his time the ministry 
was the first thought of young graduates of Harvard, like him- 
self, of the original New England stock, who had a serious 
purpose for a useful and honored life. Some of his own most 
eminent contemporaries — like Governors William Stoughton, 
Joseph Dudley and Gurdon Saltonstall, had first had the min- 
istry in view. Two of these had preached, as had many 
otliers, Who afterwards found high magistracy, teaching, or 
other service preferable to them. In fact, Sewall did, once 
at least, make trial of his gifts at the desk. He records that 
in April, 1675, four years after he had graduated, he " helped 
preach" for his old teacher, Mr. Parker, of Newbury, the min- 
ister of Sew all's parents. Carried away by the exuberance 
ot his thought and feeling, he writes — '' Being afraid to look 
oil the glass [the sand glass in the pulpit] ignorantly and 
unwittingly, I stood two hours and a half." Though he had 
entered upon mercantile business, he was urged by some 
friends to engage in the ministry. He remained, however, 
through all his life, the most ministerial layman in this com- 
munity, where there were many such. Very few, if any, 
who filled the desks, surpassed him in biblical, theological, 
or classical attainments. His library was of solid stock, large 



and rich in the learning of the time. Classical works, com- 
mentaries, theological treatises and sermons, imported by 
himself, and especially works on the Prophecies, his favorite 
theme, engaged his study and profound thought. He loved 
to present choice volumes to the College, to poor ministers, 
to converted Indians, and to others who could vs^ell vise them. 

His religious relations in his youth were, of course, those 
of his parents in Newbury. He united himself with this, the 
Third, or South Church in Boston, at the age of twenty-five, 
in 1677? and made a simple relation of his religious experi- 
ence in accepting the Covenant. He was probably led to this 
choice by the membership here of the family of Mr. John 
Hull, whose daughter he had married the year previous. He 
lived happily with his excellent wife, the mother of all his 
fourteen children, forty-three years. He says she avowed 
to him that she had set her heart upon him when he was de- 
livering his Commencement part. She was the heiress of 
that time. 

For fifty-three years, seventeen of them under the pastor- 
ship of his honored son, Sewall was in membership here. It 
may safely be affirmed that in all the brotherhood of the 
Church, including even the five pastors whose ministry he 
shared, there was not one to whom the sanctuary with its of- 
fices, its divine services, its holy ties of sympathy and heljo, 
its work of edification, its benevolences for the poor and the 
ill, the African slave, the Barbary captive, and the Indian, 
were more endeared, more jealously, more watchfully cared 
for, than by himself. He might well have been called upon, 
at any moment of emergency, to occupy the pulpit. His 
piety and dignity and high repute would have graced the of- 
fice of deacon. Humble as was his estimate of his musical 
talent — and though he confesses he was apt to fall into a dif- 
ferent tune fi-om that with which he started — he seems to have 
for many years given satisfaction as a precentor. Good parts 
of your church records — births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, 
admissions to the communion, and special occasions of ob- 
servance — might be supplied from what he set down by his 



own hand, as responsive to the watchful interest of a warmly 
sympathetic heart. Though his love and zeal were intensely 
centred here, he was the medium of kindly and hospitable rela- 
tions between all the ministers and churches of the town, and 
indeed of the Province. He loved to attend the frequent do- 
mestic occasions among his immediate friends for their sober 
fiistings or glad thanksgivings, and was constant with psalm, 
or prayer or exhortation at the set meetings of a group of 
families seeking edification in their homes in turn. There 
was no variance or break, no stagnation or ebb in his reli- 
gious life. This was continuous and uniform, in his closet, his 
family circle, the church, the court room, in college business, 
the council chamber, the town meeting, and the school visita- 
tion. His frequent professional journeys, with the discomforts 
and perils of those days, on rough roads, across ferries, often 
of icy waters, over marshes and by inner seas, made welcome 
the I'estful firesides of friends — with something warming for 
food and drink. When he returned home from these exposed 
journeys, he would enter in his record with a calm devotion, 
his " Laus Deo.'^ His gravity was habitual. Rarely, though 
sometimes, do we come upon a trace of what he calls a 
" pleasancy." He was too good and serene a man to deny 
himself smiles and joys : too sedate to indulge the boisterous 
laugh. 

Some of you may be asking how we know all this about 
a man who passed from life more than a century and a half 
ago.? The answer, full and true, will soon come. Judge 
Sewall is better known to us in both his outer and in- 
ner being, in all the elements, composition and manifes- 
tation of character, in his whole personal, domestic, social, 
official and religious life, than is any other individual in our 
local history of two hundred and fifty years. And this is 
true not only of himself, but through his pen, curiously ac- 
tive, faithful, candid, kind, impartial and ever just, his own 
times stand revealed and described to us, as if by thousands 
of daguerreotypes and repeating telephones. His surround- 
ings and companions, his home and public life, the habits. 



usages, customs and events, and even the food which we can 
ahnost smell and taste, the clothes and furnishings, the modes 
of hospitality, of travel, the style of things — all in infinite 
detail, the medical practice, the military service, the formal 
ceremonials and courtesies, the excitements, panics and disas- 
ters, the secret and public movements in affairs, the doings, 
the worth and repute of contemporaries — all these have come 
to us through Sewall's pen, with a fullness, vividness and old 
time flavor and charm, which we might in vain seek to gath- 
er and put together from many hundred volumes. And all 
this comes from Sewall's having kept a daily journal from 
1674 to 1739 — fifty-five years. 

These surviving journals from the generations gone are 
very risky, sometimes worthless or mischievous, and often 
objectionable, productions. Sometimes they are slanderous, 
trespasses upon the rights and repute of those who can make 
no defence. In those cases, they always reflect reproach 
upon the writers of them. It was the habit of a class of men 
of Sewall's time and training to keep diaries, and those of a 
religious spirit made them the repository of their self-reckon- 
ings as under the eye of God, the recoi'd of their introspective 
searching of themselves, their heights and depths of feelings, 
their unveiled faults and short comings. Some of the writers 
indulged themselves with more or less of freedom in express- 
ing opinions about the character and course of other persons. 
Qiiite a list might be made of men in position or office who, 
having accumulated masses of such materials in their active 
life-time, took care that the fire should destroy them before 
the writers died. A serious question arises as to the rightful- 
ness or expediency of publishing these self-confidences and 
self-revelations of men who left such records behind them, 
either by accident or design. The question must be decided 
in each case by the contents and spirit of the record, if a good 
judgment is exercised in the disposal of it. The excellent 
Dr. Doddridge was made ridiculous by his kinsman who pub- 
lished his private secrets. The diaries of Sewall's contem- 
poraries, Increase and Cotton Mather, are extant, but only 



extracts of them have been pruited. Much in them is wisely 
suppressed. Increase, though a most faithful, devoted and 
eminently serviceable man, was morbid, censorious some- 
times, and suflered as if unappreciated. The younger Mather 
was often jealous, spiteful, rancorous and vengeful in his daily 
records ; and thus the estimate of his general worth is so far 
reduced through materials furnished by himself. 

When, some eighteen years ago, Judge Sewall's papers 
came, by purchase, into the possession of the Massachu- 
setts Historical Societ}', the writer had been dead some hun- 
dred and thirty years. The MSS., passing down in a 
branch of his family, had been highly prized, gathering 
an increasing value. They had been kept with much re- 
serve, sparingly yielding to earnest inquirers the infor- 
mation they were known to contain. Did the writer ever 
have in view or imagination, that what he wrote in his privacy 
— never, so far as appears, subjecting even a page to any eye 
but his own — would be copied, printed, published, and put 
within reach of all who might wish to read it.'* We may be 
safe in answering that he did not. Do we wrong him in thus 
bringing his secrets to the light.'' There is no entry in his 
papers from which we could infer either a permission or a pro- 
hibition to give them to the world. But I may answer the 
question by saying frankly and gladly, that while we gather 
from his papers matter of incalculable value and interest for 
historians and the searchers into the curious things of the past, 
neither Sewall himself nor a single one of all those whom he 
names, sutlers any harm or reproach from the disclosures. Not 
a line nor a word in those records reveals anything but a pure 
and unstained soul, a most tender and scrupulous conscience, 
a loving and child-like heart, a walk in life spent and conse- 
crated as under the All-Seeing and Holy Eye. There are no 
grudges, no animosities, no malice, no bitter musings, no 
aggravating reproaches of those — some very near to him — who 
caused him loss and grief, but ever efforts to reconcile, by 
forbearance, remonstrance, and forgiveness. Having in view 
some passages — we may call them queer, to be referred to 



presently — the question pressed with some misgiving upon 
the Editors of the papers, whether they should be set forth 
in print. Bearing in view that such documents are not 
designed for general reading, but primarily as materials for 
digested history — the rule is accepted, that the reason which 
justifies the printing of them, covers also the exaction, that 
they be literally and faithfully set forth. 

The deepest impression made upon me in the pleasant use 
of the leisure of five years in the editing and annotating of 
the Judge's Journal, was that of the profound and consistent 
devoutness of his spirit, and the tender aftcctionateness of his 
nature. He was pure in heart, and so had divine visions. 
He was touched by all the infirmities and griefs of others. 
Unknown to them they had his prayers, when he heard of 
their trials. He had his daily errands of help and sympathy 
to the poor and suftering. The capacious pockets in the 
outer garments of those days, were, in his case, never empty 
when he went out of doors. They must have been most 
miscellaneously crowded with sermons, trinkets, sweetmeats, 
fruits and other delicacies. Generally figs, oranges, or " Mar- 
malade" or "Chockalett" accompanied a little religious tract. 
One is a little startled on reading, that on a visit of courtship 
to a rather hesitating widow, he left with her " Sibbs' Bowels." 
But we are relieved on learning that it was a harmless tractate, 
by Dr. Sibbs, with the full title — '^ Bowels Opened ; or, a Dis- 
covery of the Union betwixt Christ and the Church." He was 
the constant visitor of all of his own widest circle, lofty or hum- 
ble, confined to the house or the chamber. He was the first on 
our soil to write and print against the enslaving of Africans. 
His interest for the Indians so earnest, warm and constant, was 
shown in his administration of a charitable trust for them, and 
in visiting their fading remnants in their woful settlements. I 
cannot say whether he would have been in or out of sympathy 
with all that is included in the " woman-question " of our time. 
I think he would wish to divide it. But we have an unpub- 
lished MS. of his in which he pleads for women as the "joint 
heirs of the heavenly mansions," and indignantly argues down 



the notion of their excUision. " Talitha-Cumi — Young Wo- 
man, Arise ! " is the felicitous title of his essay. Sewall cer- 
tainly had what seems to us a morbid addiction to attendance 
on funerals, and to serving as a Bearer of defunct persons. 
Standing recently by the ancient grave, in the cemetery of the 
town of Revere, of Dean Winthrop, the last surviving son of 
Governor Winthrop, I recalled Sewall's record, that he " helped 
let down the body into the earth." But it must have been in 
pathetic memory of the vanished family of the ever honored 
first magistrate of the Colony. Indeed, Sewall gives his 
fondest and tenderest words to his ftirewells, one by one, till 
he reaches the last, of the survivors of the first English comers 
here, especially to those of them, who were "true New Eng- 
land people," and " dear lovers " of this heritage. Still tombs 
and graves had a fascination for him. As his tomb in the 
Granary was so often opened in his bereavements, he tells us 
how, seated upon some relic in it, he was "entertained" by 
his father and mother Hull. In the widest compass of read- 
ing, it would be hard to find a more pathetic utterance than 
that which this man of station and dignity, when nearly fifty 
years of age, gave forth to the neighbors gathered round his 
mother's open grave in Newbury : 

" Nathan! Bricket taking in hand to fill the grave, I said, Forbear a 
little, and suffer me to say that amidst our bereaving sorrows we have 
the comfort of beholding this Saint put into the rightful possession of 
that happiness of living desired, and dying lamented. She lived com- 
mcndably four and fifty years with her dear Husband, and my dear 
Father; and she could not well brook the being divided from him,' 
which is the cause of our taking leave of her in this place. She was 
a true and constant lover of God's Word, Worship, and Saints; and 
she always with a patient cheerfulness submitted to the Divine decree 
of providing bread for herself and others in the sweat of her brows. 
And now her infinitely Gracious and Bountiful Master has promoted 
her to the honor of higher employments, fully and .absolutely dis- 
charged from all manner of toil and sweat. My honored and beloved 
friends and neighbors ! My dear Mother never thought much of doing 
the most frequent and homely offices of love for me ; and lavished 
away many thousands of words upon me, before I could return one 

J He had died eight months previously. 



word in answer. And therefore I ask and hope that none will be 
offended that I have now ventured to speak one word in her behalf, 
when she herself is become speechless. Made a motion of mv hand, 
for the filling of the Grave. Note, I could hardly speak for passion 
and tears." 

If one would have a vivid sense of the doctrine of the Di- 
vine Omnipresence, as a felt reality every where and always, 
let him follow Sewall in his instantaneous recourse to prayer 
on every moment, occasion and incident of life. He made 
full, incessant, persistent trial of it — by his own lips and those 
of others. The oldest daughter, the only unmarried child, 
left in his home, was long a bed-ridden sufferer, vv'ith a com- 
plication of ills. His faith and patience were sorely tried by 
her case. He had summoned successively one by one, all the 
ministers to pray by her bedside, and he adds — " I think now 
all the ministers of our communion have been here. The 
Lord help us, that we may not trust in Men, but in God." 
It is not often that a bereaved father takes a full grown son 
after the death of his mother, into the garret, to pray with him 
on the wise selection of a substitute or successor for her. 
When he was absent from home, on the recurrence of his 
birth-day, his rule was to go alone into the Meeting-house for 
a season of private prayer. He often gives us the themes of 
his devotions in his special fast days. He left many little 
books crowded with notes of sermons to which he liad listened. 

Though Sewall habitually spoke and wrote with .an awed 
solemnity and submission under the mysterious ways and 
workings of Divine Piovidcnce, in its delays and disappoint- 
ments of human schemes and eftbrts, yet he drops many quaint 
hints of his intent to hold a " covenant keeping God " as bound 
to perform his part of a work, after man had done his best in 
it. There is even a touch of grim humor in the following 
hint. Sewall, as already stated, was one of the Commission- 
ers of the English Society for the conversion of the Indians, 
and most devotedly did he labor in a work which was very 
dear to his heart. He retained his faith and zeal in it, not- 
withstanding his grievous sense of its slender fruits of success. 



9 

Writing to his uncle, Stephen Dummer, in England, in r686, 
he says : — " The best News that I can think to speak of from 
America, is, that Mr. John Eliot, through the good hand of 
God upon him, hath procured a second Edition of the Bible 
in the Indian Language, so that many hundreds of them may 
read the Scriptures. Lord sanctify them by thy Truth, thy 
word is Truth. As to the Design of Converting them, we in 
N. E. may sorrowfully sing the 127 Psalm : Except the Lord 
build the House, they Labour in vain that build it. I am per- 
suaded 'twould be a most acceptable sacrifice to God, impor- 
tunately to beseech Him to put his Hand to that work, and 
not in a great measure as it were to stand and look on." Is 
it possible that if the revering Sewall had completed the sen- 
tence with the thought in his mind, he would have written 
the words — "and not do anything to help".? 

Sewall's family discipline was that of his time, I'egarded by 
us as severe. It followed the counsel of Solomon. Here is 
a specimen of it as practised upon his son, afterwards the 
Pastor of this Church, He was then three months in his fifth 
year. "November 6, 1692. Joseph threw a knop of Brass 
and hit his sister Betty on the forhead so as to make it bleed 
and swell, upon which, and for his playing at Prayer time, 
and eating when Return Thanks, I whip'd him pretty smartly. 
When I first went in (call'd by his Grand-mother) he sought 
to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the 
cradle : which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of Adam's 
carriage." Genesis iii. 8-10. 

And here is a specimen of his abounding hospitality to 
others than his " rich neighbors." 

Judging that the birth of his fourteenth child, on January 2, 
1702 (N. S.) would be the last of like events in his family, 
he makes the following record on January 16: "My wife 
treats her Midwife and Women : Had a good Dinner, Boil'd 
Pork, Beef, Fowls : very good Rost Beef, Turkey-Pie, Tarts. 
Madam Usher carv'd, Mrs. Haiiah Greenlef (the Midwife) 
Ellis, Cowell, Wheeler, Johnson, and her daughter, Mrs. 
Hill our Nurses Mother, Nurse Johnson, Hill, Hawkins, 



lO 

Mrs. Goose, Deming, Green, Smith, Hatch, Blin. Comfor- 
table moderate weather; and with a good fire in the Stove 
warm'd the room." 

Here were sixteen professional "Women," presided over 
by a Lady. Doubtless there was a generous supply of the 
liquids dispensed respectively from glasses and cups. It was 
a scene for the pen of a Dickens. 

Besides all the infinite, minute and trifling details relating to 
private, domestic and social life, and the incidents of passing 
days — from which one might reconstruct the aspect and method 
and the whole experience of the time from Sewall's journals, 
they contain matter of prime -authority and value to the his- 
torian, on critical points in public affairs, secrets of state, so 
to call them, intrigues, rivalries, cross purposes, alienations 
personal and partisan, workings of sub-currents, and compli- 
cated movements, in the little commonwealth. Sewall filled 
all but the highest office in the local government, and could 
look beneath the surface, and interpret some things which 
were mysteries or puzzles to others. He lived under both 
forms of administration, by the colonial and the provincial 
charter. His position in the royal council brought him into deli- 
cate relations with that somewhat duplex personage, Governor 
Joseph Dudley — the man of strong friends and strong enemies. 
Sewall's son had married Dudley's daughter — a iniion not 
congenial — faults, perhaps very grievous ones, on both sides — 
with temporary separation. The Judge's course in the mat- 
ter was patient, forbeai"ing, mediatory. 

There was a new spirit of relaxing of old restraints, of lib- 
eralism, of enlargement and moderation, v/orking in the time ; 
the central object then contested was the control and method 
of administration of the College. The liberalizing party won 
in the struggle. Sewall's sympathies were strongly, yet not 
passionately on the conservative side. But he was calm and 
moderate. His general frame was that of sadness, of despon- 
dency, over every sign of what was to him, a falling away 
from the old love — a decline of the original New England 
spirit. The exceptions which we should be inclined to make 



II 

from a full sympathetic estimate of the character of Sewall, 
would not in the least attach to any moral infirmity, any fault 
of temper, any lack of the most thorough integrity or sincerity, 
or any side-allurement of self-seeking. Qiiite otherwise. 
There was a slightly morbid element of timidity, foreboding 
and superstition in his nature. His scruples attached to im- 
aginations as well as to realities. He identified the true and 
right with his own standards, his limited outlook. Yet he was 
constantly seeking to restrain and rectify such weaknesses. 

The most interesting historical point in the life and character 
of Judge Sewall, is his part in connection with the Witch- 
craft tragedy. Hopeless and vain it seems to try to set right for 
superficial readers and flippant triflers, the absurd yet stock- 
folly which singles out for emphasis in scorn and reproach 
the little wilderness village of Salem, two hundred years ago, 
for its share in a stark delusion universal in Christendom. 
That delusion gave us a score of tragedies here, while there 
were thousands and hundreds of thousands of them, then and 
afterwards, all over Europe. The real stress for New England 
should be laid upon the small space within which the phrenzy 
wrought its horrors, and the brevity of the time during which 
its pall hung over our community. Executions for witch- 
craft in various parts of Europe continued long after they had 
ceased and been sorely grieved over here. We have no more 
right to censure those whose official ti'usts compelled them to 
deal with that dread panic here, than we have to charge upon 
the physicians of our day the ravages of the cholera. Much 
has been said of the absence of trained lawyers and the lack 
of legal forms and methods on the bench and in the court. 
It certainly was not for want of law in the case that those 
victims perished. The court followed strictly the English 
Statutes, even in pressing to death poor Giles Corey for refus- 
ing to plead to the indictment. The foremost judges and 
jurists of Europe presided over witchcraft trials and con- 
demned those adjudged guilty. 

But there are two distinctive and most honorable facts which 
signalize the history of our share in those harrowing tragedies. 



12 

In the first of these we may challenge a revering tribute for 
Sewall. When, five years after, the portentous shadow which 
had hung over our community was lifted, and dismay and re- 
morse for what had been done harrowed the hearts of this 
people, the Province authorities appointed a solemn Fast Day 
in homes and churches for services of humiliation and peni- 
tence. Then Sewall, who had sat as a judge in the woful 
phrenzy, in his reverent attendance, conspicuous and honored, 
upon what he calls " the solemn assembly," rose in his seat and 
bowed his head, as his pastor read his note of meek contrition, 
for his possible share in blood guiltiness. Did ever a judge in 
Christendom, even the wisest and the best of them, ever do that, 
before or since ? Sewall was then but second in rank on that 
bench. His chief was William Stoughton, a man of austere 
and grim spirit, persistent in what he called following his 
conscience, the literal word of scripture against witches, and 
the light which was before him, though it was really dark- 
ness. He disapproved this act of Sewall, and would not 
imitate it. 

Yet one other signal honor might well offset — if there were 
any reason for it — the silly slander which concentrates the 
shame of witchcraft on this colony. I speak the fact grate- 
fully and boastingly. The Province of Massachusetts, by 
legislative process, allowed pecuniary compensation, so far as 
that would atone, to those who had suffered in repute or 
property through the delusion. Did any other government in 
Christendom ever do that for its thousands of wronged and 
tortured victims ? It is to be hoped that these facts may soon 
find their way into the new, more exact and more faithful 
histories which are to be written for us. 

It interests us to ask what was the quality of the possible 
error or guilt with which Sewall charged himself, and how 
much was covered by his "Confession." The words of the 
" Bill put up" by him on the Fast Day, are as follows — the 
reference in the beginning being to his recent domestic 
afflictions : 



13 

"Samuel Sevvall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon 
himself and family; and being sensible, that as to the Guilt contracted 
upon the opening of the late Commission of Oyer and Terminer at 
Salem (to which the Order for this Day relates) he is, upon many ac- 
counts, more concerned than any that he knows of, Desires to take 
the Blame and Shame of it. Asking pardon of men, And especially de- 
siring Prayers that God, who has an Unlimited Authority, would 
pardon that sin and all other his sins ; personal and Relative ; And ac- 
cording to his infinite Benignity and Sovereignty, Not visit the sin 
of him, or of any other, upon himself or any of his, nor upon the 
Land, &c." 

Now we are not to infer from this that Sewall had come to 
disbelieve or even doubt that what was called witchcraft, a 
contract or covenant made with the devil, for purposes of 
sorcery and evil, was a possible and actual iniquity to be 
recognized by law. Neither the intelligence nor the scepti- 
cism of the most enlightened and devout in Christendom had 
at that time reached so far as to question the reality of that 
dreadful sin. Among the other appalling aggravations of the 
fearful delusion which struck such terror into the community, 
was the fact that many of the accused, tnider the dismay and 
bewilderment of the charges made against them, confessed, 
with details of acts and circumstances, to having had deal- 
ings with the devil. Sewall's misgivings are probably to be 
referred to his deep distrust of that part of the evidence 
against the accused, upon which the court had proceeded to 
sentence — known as " spectre testimony." It had been ac- 
cepted in belief that Satan could empower his dupes in spectral 
or shadowy forms, to impersonate or assume the shape of 
their principals, and so to torment their victims when them- 
selves distant in the living body. The further prosecutions 
for witchcraft broke down under the distrust of this spectral 
testimony. It is probable that Sewall's sharp self-reproach- 
ings centred there. Occasionally, but very rarely, he refers 
in his journal to painful reminders. 

In that exquisite ballad of our beloved and venerable poet, 
Whittier, so graced with tenderness, sweetness, and reverent 
regard, entitled " The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall," we read, 



14 

" Of the fast which the good man life-long kept 
With a haunting sorrow that never slept, 
As the circling year brought round the time, 
Of an error that left the sting of crime. 

****** 
All the day long, from dawn to daw-n, 
His door was bolted, his curtain drawn : 
No foot on his silent threshold trod. 
No eye looked on him save that of God, 
As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms 
Of penitent tears and prayers, and psalms, 
And, with precious proofs from the sacred word 
Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord." 

This may all have been as the gentle and loving spirit of the 
poet has visioned it in reading for us the heart of the good 
Judge. But it w^ould be distressing to have to believe that he 
bore such a life-long burden and woe, chased by ghosts to be 
exorcised only by an annual fast from dawn to dawn, free as 
he was of guilt. So it relieves us to be able to refer all that 
is so gloomy in those lines to a very free indulgence of poetic 
license. There is no trace of any such mournful observance 
during the nearly forty years remaining of the Judge's life. 
The Judge, like other devout persons of his time, kept oc- 
casions of fasting and solitary self-communion. His Journal 
records for us many such occasions, with minute and special 
accounts of the subjects, the matter of his contrite exercises, 
and the topics of his prayers. But in no single instance is 
there a reference made to or a mention of his share in the 
proceedings at Salem. 

The following extract from the Journal, in 170S, gives us 
the matter and the method of one of the Judge's Fast Days. 

" The Appointment of a Judge for the Superior Court being to be 
made upon next Fifth day, Feb. 12. I praj'd God to Accept me in 
keeping a privat day of Prayer, with Fasting for That and other Im- 
portant Matters : I kept it upon the Third day, Feb. 10, in the upper 
Chamber at the North-East end of the House, fastening the Shutters 
next the Street. Perfect -what is lacking in mj Faith, and in the faith 
of my dear Yoke fellow. Convert my children ; especially Samuel and 
Hannah : Provide Rest and Settlement for Hannah : Recover Mary, 
Save Judith, Elizabeth and Joseph : Requite the Labour of Love of my 
Kinswoman Jane Tappin, Give her health, find out Rest for her. Make 
David a man after thy own heart, Let Susan live and be baptised with 
the Holy Ghost, and with fire. Relations. Steer the Government in 



15 

this difficult time, when the Governour and many others are at so 
much variance : Direct, incline, overrule, on the Council-day, as to 
the special Work of it in filling the Superior Court with Justices : 
or any other thing of like nature : as Plymouth inferior Court. Bless 
the Company for Propagation of the Gospel, especiall Gov. Ashurst 
&c. Revive the Business of Religion at Natick, and accept and bless 
John Neesnumin, who went thither last week for that end. Mr. 
Rawson at Nantucket. Bless the South Church in preserving and 
spiriting our Pastor; in directing unto suitable Supply, and making 
the Church unanimous : Save the Town, College : Province from 
Invasion of Enemies, open, Secret, and from false Brethren : Defend 
the Purity of Worship. Save Connecticut, bless their New Gov- 
ernour : Save the Reformation under New York Government [then 
with a Roman Catholic Governor.] Reform all the European Plan- 
tations in America: Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch: 
Save this new World, that where Sin hath abounded, Grace may 
Superabound; that Christ who is stronger, would bind the strong 
man and spoil his house : and order the Word to be given, Babylon 
is fallen. Save our Qiieen [Anne], lengthen out her life and Reign. 
Save France, make the Proud helper Stoop. Save all Europe : Save 
Asia, Africa, Europe and America. These were general heads of my 
Meditation and prayer: and through the bounteous Grace of God, I 
had a very Comfortable day of it." 

The two most pathetic entries in the Diary referring to the 
sad proceedings at Salem, are the following, the first being 
set down four years after the executions: "Dec. 24, 1696. 
Sam. recites to mc in Latin Mat. 12. from the 6th to the end 
of the 1 2th verse. The 7th verse did awfully bring to mind 
the Salem Tragedie." The words are—" If ye had known 
what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye 
would not have condemned the guiltless." 

The other passage is under date of May 3, 1720. "Dr. 
Mather sends me Mr. Daniel Neal's History of New-England : 
It grieves me to see New-England's Nakedness laid open in the 
business of the Qiiakers, Anabaptists, Witchcraft. The 
Judges Names are mentioned, p. 502. My Confession, p. 
536. vol. 2. The Good and Gracious God be pleased to save 
New-England, and me and my family." 

To some of the wrongs here censured the Judge was not a 
party. The extreme and ever to be deplored dealings with 



i6 

the Qiiakers had taken place just before Sewall was brought 
hither as a child. But it must be admitted that what he 
afterwards saw and knew of the Quakers of his period excited 
his strong disapprobation and dread. He regarded them as 
arrogant, fanatical and intolerant of the profoundest religious 
convictions of others. They vilified the Puritan creed, minis- 
try and worship. Their claim to direct Divine Inspiration in 
the utterance of personal Judgments and the denouncing of 
direful calamities of fire, sword and plague were grievous of- 
fences. Sewall was deeply stirred when they broke in upon 
the exercises in the South Meeting-house, and in frantic garb, 
gesture and denunciation struck horror into the assembly. 
On June 17, 16S5, he refused in the Council to grant the 
petition of Qiiakers to be allowed to enclose the spot on the 
Common where the four victims were buried. When a peti- 
tion was offered in Council, August 33, 170S, to permit the 
building of a Quaker Meeting-house in Boston, Sewall writes, 
" I opposed it: said I would not have a hand in setting up 
their Devil Worship." It may be profitless to ask, as it would 
be difficult to answer the question, Whether, if Sewall had 
been in full manhood and in magistratical office at the time 
when the four Quakers were executed, he would have ap- 
proved of the penalty. Possibly, if not probably — guided by 
the spirit of that age, happily, not of our own — he would have 
done so. He was as rigid a Puritan as was Endicott, and 
though of a tender heart, he notes with a stern censure the 
slightest deviation in opinion or observance from the Puritan 
rule, while an open contempt and mockery of it would have 
provoked his utmost severity. He would at least have shared 
the opinion which many hold at this day, that the Qiiakers 
themselves are justly censurable because, knowing the temper 
of the magistrates and their rightful claim to local jurisdic- 
tion, they persistently intruded and returned here, and so ex- 
asperated the authorities as to goad them to extremities of 
folly and cruelty which have left the darkest stain on the 
annals of Massachusetts. 

Reference has been made to Sewall as a lawyer and a 



17 

Judge — subsequently the highest in office, though without 
legal training. A word on that point. The Colony of Mas- 
sachusetts from the first did not like lawyers, and would have 
been glad not to have had one of them on its soil, in fact, 
clearing off the first one that came here. Of course, there- 
fore, there had been in Sewall's time no means for training 
lawyers. His own Journal gives us but scant information 
about his entrance on the profession, or his furnishing for it, 
then, or afterwards, though he imported many law-books. 
It may be said of him that, " simple truth was his utmost 
skill." He had an awful sense of the supreme law of right- 
eousness, as set forth in the two great commandments. The 
Scriptures furnished a sufficient code to one whose heart was 
pure and whose eye was single. He followed the methods of 
natural equity, trying to bring simple common sense to bear 
as in arbitration and decision. He seems to have acted on 
the conviction that it is not for men to do what our legislators 
assume to do — " to make laws,!' but to discover what are the 
laws already put in force by the Divine Legislator, and to give 
them recognition. 

So far as Sewall's Journal, printed for a Society of limited 
membership and a small constituency, had worked its way 
to a more public attention, the editors found that, as they ex- 
pected, the passages in it which they most hesitated about 
jorinting, have been most readily seized upon for merriment 
and even ridicule. Let me state the case on its two sides. 
In matters upon which most men make fools of themselves 
in the course of their lives — this gi^ave and solemn judge, in 
all his dignity, is brought to the level of our common 
humanity in what are called " affairs of the heart." And we 
have exposed him from behind the shutters. Some of the 
aspects of his repeated, and not always successful courtships, 
are certainly amusing. He did not mean that we should 
know anything about them. But he wrote them down in 
full, sovnetimes elated, sometimes, as the word is — " mit- 
tened." The editors did indeed pause over the putting into 
print the communicative and descriptive details of his court- 
3 



i8 

ship of Madame Winthrop. We note the warming-up and 
the cooling-oft' process. She seems to have first suggested 
the arrangement to him. But he was ready. And when she 
was making up her mind adversely, Sewall was quick to see 
the signs. Her linen was not as clean as usual when she had 
received him ; she kept on her gloves ; she drew a small 
table between them, etc. etc. etc. Now Madame Winthrop 
was evidently a "worldly-minded" woman. Clearly Sewall 
might have won lier had he been willing to gratify her in 
two exacted conditions. These were, first, by setting up an 
equipage at a greater expense than he, though fully able, 
thought it wise to indulge ; second, that like the great digni- 
taries of his time, he should wear a full wig. This latter de- 
mand touched Sewall at a sensitive point. He had an in- 
tensely religious objection to periwigs, had written against 
their use, and sharply rebuked some of his friends who wore 
them. His Maker, he said, provided him at his birth with a 
head dress. As it thinned with age, he wore a simple skull- 
cap — especially in his seat in the draughty and unwarmed 
meeting-house. So his suit to Madame Winthrop fell through. 
He turned his attention elsewhere, and easily succeeded. 
This and other tentative courtships, so artlessly and con- 
fidingly entered by Sewall in his Journal, when spread on the 
printed page for our day, do at first appear to trifle with his 
secrets, and to expose the dignified and honored Judge to 
ridicule and banter. Now look at the matter in another light, 
under which the ludicrous episode is, to my mind, not only 
relieved, but graced with a charm. Sewall had already en- 
tered on his seventieth year. He was a lonely man. His 
first wife, the mother of all his children, fourteen in number, 
was dead. His second wife had but a short tenure with him 
of seven months. Of his children, eight had died ; five had 
homes of their own, married. There was left to him only 
his oldest daughter, Hannah, invalid and bed-ridden. Though 
the father's patience and devotion were sorely tried by her 
protracted suflerings, they were never exhausted. Male and 
female physicians, possets, plaisters and appliances of all 



19 

sorts, and the prayers of each of the ministers in town, had 
been engaged for her. She had a habit of falling down 
stairs ; had broken both her knee pans, and would doubtless 
have broken others, if she had had them. His house was a for- 
lorn and desolate scene. The edifice was spacious and every 
way attractive, in the old genei'ous style of furnishing and 
comfort. Sewall was a bountiful provider, fond of large 
hospitality, given and enjoyed. What was he to do in his 
loneliness.'' He would not bring in and set at his table a 
hireling official, a housekeeper, so called. He therefore paid 
his tribute, and a noble one it was, to that wise, judicious, 
though exacting rule for the order and security of New Eng- 
land domestic life — that every home should have in it a pre- 
siding mistress, competent, congenial in mind and spirit, with 
its head — a wife, and for Sewall's rank, a lady. Romance 
for him was out of the question ; though it has played its 
tricks with some older men than he. If he had not set about 
looking for a wife, others would have done it for him, as was 
then usual in the case of all widowers. Indeed Madame 
Winthrop herself had discussed the qualities of six available 
widows with Sewall, who, as a class, seem to have been 
preferred to spinsters. The Judge, though not portly, was of 
stately and dignified presence, and of a benign countenance. 
He sets down his weight when fifty years of age as " 193 
pounds, net. Had only my close Coat on." 

A short reference may now be made to what suggests it- 
self when we take this typical man out of his own time and 
set him in our time. 

My own readings and thinkings have led me to rest in the 
conclusion that what we call Puritanism — as expressing a 
body of opinions and convictions, a spirit and a method in 
conduct and in life, was limited in its fulness and intensity of 
sway and influence here totwogenerationsof men and women, 
after which it yielded to softening and reducing agencies. It 
was earnest, sincere and mastering in the first comers here, 
and it descended from and was imparted by them to their 
direct progeny, to be manifested by these in even a somewhat 



20 

more rigid and austere form than by their parents. A stern 
family discipline, teaching and example, the hard and rude con- 
ditions of life, labor, seclusion from the freer influences at 
work in the world, all helped to impress Puritanism on the 
first generation born on this soil. But their children became 
restive, non-compliant, indulging in a larger outlook, falling, 
as the phrase was, "from their first love." In accounting 
for this, while allowing for obvious natural reasons for it, we 
have also to recognize the very important fact that all of the 
first comers here were by no means in full sympathy with 
the chief master spirits, the leaders and guides of the enter- 
l^rise, those who had their all at stake, and who indulged an 
iron will. We detect friction, signs of restlessness, antago- 
nism and strong individual assertion from the first. Only the 
mastering of the stern unyielding rule of the foremost spirits 
kept down open opposition. Grievances soon demanded a 
hearing and a redress. The first spirit of zeal, resolve and 
dominance in leaders was steadily reduced in vigor and in 
securing its own way, by a rapidly strengthening force in the 
number and power of the discontented and the dissident. 

This popular fretting under the rigidity of the Puritan rule, 
compelling its relaxation, was illustrated in the opposition to 
the extreme dealings with the Qiiakers, less than thirty years 
after the planting of the Colony. It is to be remembered that 
the General Court, exercising all legislative, judicial and execu- 
tive functions, was constituted only of and by church members, 
a minority of the people. Even then the death penalty had 
only a single vote in the majority. The strong popular op- 
position to its enforcement required a band of soldiery, with 
noise of drums to drown it. Then the Court itself broke 
down in its extreme severity. The people would have no 
more executions. The imprisoned Qiiakers were all re- 
leased on their promise to leave the jurisdiction. After this 
the Magistrates received a letter from Charles II., interposing 
in behalf of the Qiiakers. The magistrates treated this royal 
interference as they always did such inatters, with a feint of 
respect, and wrote the king in reply an account of their annoy- 



21 

ance by the Qiiakcrs. Unfortunately he sent them a second 
letter authorizing them to pass " a sharp law " against their 
troublers, as he said he had himself been compelled to do. 

Judge Sewall has been called "the last of the Puritans." 
There is truth enough in that statement to allow it to pass. 
Thorough and intense Puritan as he was, he stands distinct 
and eminent, even among his contemporaries of weight and 
dignity, as more of a Puritan than were some of them. Tak- 
ing him as a whole, in type of character, prominence of place, 
sum of personal influence, we may say that in the generation 
following there was no successor to him, no peer or repetition 
of him in the exemplification of the qualities, single and 
united, which so strongly marked his individuality. 

The chief characteristic of real, full Puritanism was in its 
estimate and way of using and dealing Avith the Bible, as the 
only and the full and sufficient authority in religion — dispens- 
ing with, and even contemning and defying all ecclesiastical, 
traditionary and priestly auxiliaries or obstructions in its use. 
All religious deferences and confidences withdrawn from all 
other appliances for faith and obedience, centred upon the 
Bible. That was supremely prized and revered. Sewall's trust 
and love and awe, his joy and hope, his peace, and also his 
dread, rested in the " Word." He takes up the Bible with a 
serene and full confidence, as if he had received it in its English 
dress directly from the Divine hand through a luminous cloud : 
so written and certified, so self-explaining, as to be read only 
with simple and childlike confidence of heart and spirit. It 
was all alike through and through, as are slices and crumbs 
even from any part of a loaf of bread. There were passages 
in it which, so to speak, appalled and frightened him. But 
I think there is not a single token in his Journal of any sug- 
gestion from the critical faculty, any halting over perplexity, 
still less, any prompting to explain away. It was from this 
august estimate and this revering use of the Bible, that the 
Puritans derived the tenets of their stern creed and the prin- 
ciples of their church institution and discipline, fortified by a 
strong array of proof texts. 



22 

Now if any one would have a vivid and full impression of 
the changes wrought by the silent lapse of time through two 
centuries in all the elements and workings of character, 
opinions, believings, habits and rules of life, estimates of 
principles and values, tolerances, prejudices, concessions and 
allowances, in all matters involving our own conduct and 
that of others, — let him take Sewall out of his own Book and 
stand him before us to-day. Put him, such as he was, to 
mark the individuality of a man who fills a like place, with 
like repute and influence in our time. Imagine that you have 
him resurrected before you, for private converse in a quiet 
apartment, or to be taken by the arm for a walk amid these 
very places, while you explain things to him. It would be 
an all-sufficient way of i"ealizing that we live only for our 
own time and place, and should be utterly dazed if separated 
from our own surroundings and associates. Of course, in 
such an imagined interview and circuit with- a revived digni- 
tary of the past age, very much would depend upon the men- 
tal and moral furnishing, the capacity and staple, the breadth • 
and compass of intelligence and discernment in the man him- 
self. For instance, Dr. Franklin, and his early contemporary 
Cotton Mather, would look with widely different eyes, 
thoughts and judgments upon the marvellously changed as- 
pects of things in this, their childhood's home. A pretty 
fair test also would be found in such a companionship for ex- 
plaining the present to a man of the past, in the degree of 
your success in satisfying him which of all these changes 
have been positive improvements and advances, indicating 
real progress to the truth and right, the wise, the ex- 
pedient, the safe and the practically good. But let us con- 
fine ourselves to Sewall resurrected for companionship, and 
after a wide circuit through the city, brought in to collect his 
amazed, astounded and unutterable thoughts in this noble and 
richly adorned church. Seat him beside his own tablet. 
The last earnest act of his life, outside of the Court, his at- 
tendance on which prevented his being at an important church- 
meeting, was to send a most beseeching protest to that meet- 



23 

ing. The purpose of the mecthig was to provide for taking 
down the edifice of wood on the old site, where lie had wor- 
shipped for more than fifty years, and substituting for it the 
brick edifice still standing, which you have abandoned. 
Grievous was the pain and lament of the Judge over that 
proposal. He did not live to witness its completion. Some 
very marked changes — the most revolutionary, he would 
have been readily reconciled to. When you explained to him 
the national flag, he would doubtless approve that we were 
no longer governed from across the water. Our grand school- 
houses would have pleased him. The Public Library and the 
street railways would have gratified him, unless you had 
whispered to him that they were used on the Sabbath. The 
numerous bright gas-lights at night he would approve, re- 
membering that he had in his time often gone out at mid- 
night, carrying a lantern, in search of a midwife. He would 
stand amazed over this whole region of parks, gardens and 
palatial dwellings, known to him as a wide, shallow bay of 
salt-water, now filled up to his own farm, at Sewall's Point 
in Brookline. 

But what a racking of all his sensibilities, if unchanged, it 
would have been, to face a thousand of the features, habits, 
incidents and facts about this city, which in his day, occupied 
by a homogeneous English community, was kept under re- 
straint by an austere morality and a power of repression. 
His hand as a magistrate was put forth against the imported 
organist for the "box of whistles" in King's Chapel, who 
undertook to smuggle in his frivolous skill to teach some 
children how to dance. He uttered his solemn protest when 
he heard the rumor of some proposed theatrical entertain- 
ments in the Town House. What horror would strike him 
when told that dancing and dramatic exercises were now parts 
of some of our church entertainments ! He sturdily opposed, 
and refused to sell a piece of his own land for, the building 
of a church in Boston for the forms of worship of the monarch 
and realm of England. W^hat would he have said to all these 
churches and halls of ours for all creeds and no ifreed — Roman 



24 

Catholic, Synagogues, Spiritualist Temples, etc. ? He fre- 
quently entered in his Journal his delight over the very slight 
i"ecognition of Christmas. What would he say now, when 
the dealers in holiday goods work the whole community into 
a fever of excitement in that season, and children are turned 
into little highwaymen, demanding what you mean to give 
them for a Christmas present.'' Good children in his day had 
for a present a copy of that grim and sulphurous poem — 
Wigglesworth's " Day of Doom." You would not have 
found it agreeable work to have explained all things to, and 
answered all the questions of, the resurrected Judge. As to 
some things, be sure you would have had to hesitate and 
stutter and perhaps turn away your face, wishing your utterly 
perplexed companion would not ask so many and just such 
questions. For his part I know that he, the honored, revered 
and beloved magistrate, neighbor, friend and saint of his day 
would implore you to let him go quietly back to the scenes, 
associates, ways and doings of his own time. 

Put the truth now plainly and in full force. By the standards 
and principles which Sewall conscientiously applied to him- 
self and others in his day, a large majority of all who are now 
living in Boston, would be offenders, culprits, in some form 
or degree — about some thing, opinion, habit or way of life. 
As such, they would have been by him rebuked, censured, 
restrained, put under some disability, fined or imprisoned. 
Habits and usages, amusements and dissipations, indulgences 
and tolerated iniquities, all around us, would draw out his 
sternest rebuke, as in no way admitting of justification, or 
even of allowance as conditions of real individual liberty 
among us. Sewall cannot summon us before his tribunal ; 
but there is a higher tribunal before which we are all amenable. 

In reconstructing through Sewall's pages the domestic, 
social and. civil habits and institutions of his time, we may 
fall to musing over this question : Suppose this community 
had been left to the natural development of those habits and 
institutions, strictly through its own homogeneous population, 
increasing and modifying from the original English Puritan 



■^5 

stock, without the flooding in here of foreign and incongruous 
elements, swamping our own native born element, and 
introducing here, ideas, customs, amusements, and religious 
beliefs and observances, which were most intolerable to our 
ancestors, and to be rid of which forever, was ;• -^''nie object 
of their exiling themselves from the old wor ^ ' 
demonstrative annual pageant in this city is or 
Day." That this should be so, and should c ■ 
and should be even complacently enjd^^ed r 
those who hardly understand its signifitance — lh.^ 
taken as a type of the transformation which has been wrought 
here from the old traditions of our heritage. 

It is better that the old Puritan Judge should stand com- 
memorated on that plain tablet, than that he should come 
back here to have his soul vexed by the heresies and enor- 
mities of this present generation. Nor with our enlargement, 
freedom, abounding appliances and facilities, our compass of 
differences and necessary tolerances, our broader horizon for 
outlook, our range in the ventures of questioning thought, 
even if an element of degeneracy, and a parting from some- 
thing supremely good, is the purchase price of all we have, 
— should we be happy to turn back the stream and float to the 
springs of a rude and toiling life with our fathers. We have 
no reproaches for them. May our posterity have as good 
reason to honor, and as little cause to apologize for, us, as we 
have for them. 



26 



NOTE. 

Reference is made on page 23 to Judge Sewall's letter to 
the church-meeting, opposing the building of a new Meeting- 
house. He requested that his dissent might be entered upon 
the Church Records, which your late pastor, Dr. Manning, 
; was not complied with. As it is a characteristic 
e copy it from the Judge's Letter Book. 

everend Mr. Joseph Sewall, & to the Reverend Mr. 
:e, Pastors of the South Church in Boston, and to the 
lid Church, assembled in a Church Meeting, on Tues- 
day, the seven & twentieth day of February, 1727-S. 

In vsrhich Meeting Two Questions are to be Answered to wit: 
Whether the Old Meeting House shall be Repaired, or a New One 
builded. 

That our Meeting House needs Repairing, is Apparent : and I ap- 
prehend that it ought to be done as soon as the Season of the year 
w-ill admit. 

But as for the building of a New Meeting house, it is now unseason- 
able. God in his holy Providence preserving this, seems plainly to 
advise us to the contrary. This is a very good Meeting house, and 
we have not convenient room to build a New one in, while this is 
standing. And considering the Teri-ible Eai-th-Qiiakes we have had, 
shaking all our Foundations, it behooves us to walk humbly with our 
God and to observe the divine Counsel given to Barach by the 
Prophet Jeremiah in the forty-fifth Chapter: And to take care that Ave 
do not say in the Pride and greatness of heart, We will cut down the 
Sycamores, and change them into Cedars, Isaiah, 9. 10. We ought to 
look not only on our own Things, but also on the Things of others, 
Philip. 2. 4., and beware that we do not unjustly and violently Oust 
them out of what they are lawfully possessed of. 

Besides, I fear the Mischief is like to be distressing, for want of a 
place to worship God in, while the New Meeting House is setting up. 

Upon these, and such like Considerations, I dissent from those 
Brethren, who promote the building a New Meeting house at this 
Time, and pray that what I have written may be enter'd upon the 
Church Records. Sam^ Sewall. 

Mr. Edward Bromfield, Esq. came to me to persuade me to go to the 
Meeting warn'd last Lord's Day, and desired me that if I did not go, 
I would write. Accordingly I writ as I could in great Hurries, Mon- 
day being Probat Day. I sent for Mr. Bromfield, and he kindly 
carried it for me, and delivered it, and it w-as read." 



27 



SAMUEL SEWALL, 

Born at Bishop-Stoke, Eng., March 28, 1652. 

Being sent for by his father to come to New England, he arrived here 
with his mother, July 16, i66i. 

Graduated at Harvard College, 1671. 
Resident Fellow and Librarian. 

Married 

By Governor Bradstreet, to Judith Hull, Feb. 28, 1676, N. S. 

Joined in Covenant with South Church, 

March 30, 1677. 

Made a Freeman, ALvy, 167S. 

Undertook the Management of the Printing Press, Boston, Oct. 12, 
16S1. Resigned the office Sept. 12, 1684. 

Followed mercantile business for some years. 

Chosen Deputy, or Representative, to the General Court 
From Westfield, Hamp., Nov. 7, 16S3. 

Commissioned on the Council, June ii, 16S6. 

Sailed for England, Nov. 22, 16SS. Landed on return, Nov. 29, 1689. 

1692. — One of the Royal Council of the Province. 

Appointed by Governor Phipps, June 13, 1692, as 

One of the Seven Judges, 

By Special Commission of O^-er and Terminer, for trial of 

Cases of Witchcraft. 

From 1697 to 1703, 

Selectman, Moderator, Overseer of the Poor. 

July 25, 1699. — Commissioned by Governor Lord Bellomont, a 
Judge of the Superior Court. 

October 14, 1699. — Made a 

Commissioner of the Society for Propagating the Gospel 

Among the Indians. 

His hair becoming thin, first wore his "black cap" to Lecture, as a 
"testimony against Periwigs." 

June 24, 1700. — Published the first Anti-Slavery Tract, 
"The Selling of Joseph." 



28 

June 2, 1 70 1. — Elected 
Captain of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. 

Sept. 16, 1713. — Attends the Ordination of his son Joseph, as 
Colleague Pastor of the South Church. 

June 19, 1717. — Appointed by Governor Shute 
Judge of Probate of Suffolk. 

Oct. 19, 1717. — His wife, Judith (Hull) Sewall, dies. 

Feb. II, 171S. — There being a vacancy on the Bench, he asks, 

and receives from the Governor, the office of 

CHIEF JUSTICE. 
Takes the oath April 25. 

October 29, 1719. — Married by his son, Joseph, to the Widow of 
William Tilley, her third marriage. 

May 26, 1720. — She dies very suddenly. 

March 29, 1722. — Married by his son-in-law, 
the Rev. William Cooper, to the Widow of Robert Gibbs. 

June 4, 1725. — Declined re-election to the Council, after thirty-three 
years of service under the Province Charter. 

July 29, 172S. — Under increasing infirmities, resigns the offices of 
Chief Justice and Judge of Probate. 

January i, 1730, N. S. — ^Judge Sewall dies, after a month's illness, in 

his seventy-eighth year. Of his seven sons and seven daughters, 

two of the former, and one of the latter, survive him. 

Committed to the Hull Tomb, in the Granary Burial Ground. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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